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Latest Top-End 17" MacBook Pro Good Enough for Dragon Age? Please Advice!

J

jonatw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 27, 2007
6
0
I have a late 2007 Macbook Pro and I am looking to upgrade to a new computer.

I would like the new computer to be able to play Dragon Age on a high setting.

I am no expert with graphic cards and specs so I would like some advice on whether the latest top-end 17" Macbook Pro can handle this game. The below is the recommended specs for dragon age:

Dragon Age RECOMMENDED SPECS

* CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz Processor or equivalent
* RAM: 4 GB (Vista) or 2 GB (XP)
* VIDEO: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
AMD Phenom II X3 Triple-Core 2.8 GHz or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

If the macbook pro cannot handle the game on a high setting, should I consider the new top-end setting 27" imac, will that be able to handle this game on MAX setting?

Any expert advice are highly appreciated. Many tks in advance!!!
 
keerf said:
I'm sure it would run the game, but it might not run it as well as perhaps something more high end, but it is hard to say.

A good test would be to run the test here:

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srl

See if the system in bootcamp could pass the test.
Click to expand...

Many tks for the info, by the way after checking, my existing 17" macbook pro has the 8600M GT graphic card and from my research it seems like this card is kind of old / low end of gaming.

Dragon age states that the minimum graphic card requirement is the 7600GT, so my 8600M GT is need the minimum...?
 
well if you bootcamp in windows you can look on system requirements lab website. Also a new macbook pro 17in will be able to run it fine. I dont know about everything on high but it will def. run the game.
 
njean777 said:
well if you bootcamp in windows you can look on system requirements lab website. Also a new macbook pro 17in will be able to run it fine. I dont know about everything on high but it will def. run the game.
Click to expand...

njean777, tks, I just have no idea how much worse is the macbook pro's 9600 compare to the recommended 8800GTS 512.
 
If you are comparing graphics, notebook graphics are slow.

the 9600m GT gets about 9592 in 3DMark05 running at 1024x768 and probably close to 5000 in 3Dmark06
the 8800 GTS ( desktop card that's 2 years old) gets 18700 in 3Dmark05 at 1024x768 and can score 16000+ on 3Dmark06

So You'll be able to run the game, but most likely not in HD unless you like a slide show.
 
I'm playing it on high graphic detail and full resolution on an early 2009 17" MBP and it runs fine. It stutters sometimes when I'm hooked up to dual displays, but no problems when running just on the MBP.
 
On topic: the new one will play it just fine, the one you have now, not too sure, it'll probably play it, the question however is: what is your performance/quality expectance?
 
ANYWAYS....

The game will look great even on medium settings as long as you're playing pretty close to native resolution.

I've tried lowering some of the settings and it still looked very good.
 
back to the OP's question

No, it probably won't run satisfactorily, if you are at all interested in the quality of graphics during gameplay.

The 9600M GT is a die shrunk version of a 3 year old mid-range GPU design, and definitely won't run the latest games at reasonable resolution, high settings and good FPS. If you seriously want to play currently games well, try to go for an iMac with Radeon 4850, or build a PC on the cheap; either one would be vastly superior to the graphics performance of the MBP.
 
I would go with the top end 27¨ iMac over the mbp.

First, you can actually get a quadcore.
Second, the screen resolution is way better.
Third, the ATI 4850 is standard.
Fourth, it's upgradable to 16G RAM.
Fifth, even if you buy the 2.8 quadcore i7, it´s still 300 dollars cheaper than the 2.8 core 2 duo mbp.

Of course for around 2k, you can also have a pretty sweet PC tower even better for gaming.
 
I think it should do fine on the high setting. However, I never really tested the 9600 stuff. It also depends on what resolution you want to run it at, as well.

I've tested the 13" Macbook Pro. The 2.26GHZ model, with the default stock options (no upgrades), and as long as 800x600 is fine with you, you'll get comfortable frame-rates and proper real-time game-engine cutscenes, on the 9400M alone, when using no-AA and the medium graphics detail setting. Texture detail can be left at Max, as all current-generation Macs have good enough video cards to handle that. With the 9400M, it defaults the graphic detail setting to low, but that does turn off some of the more noticeable video visual full-screen and outfit visual effects. Medium, at least at that resolution, has little effect on the frame-rate, and provides a good compromise between getting a good deal of bells and whistles and maintaining a smooth framerate.

Now this is on the 9400M, mind you. So I would imagine bringing in the other graphics chip should allow some of these settings to bump up. Without AA, I would imagine the tradeoff would be between resolution and the graphics detail setting. There isn't that many graphic settings, on the video page. Since a lot of players like to bump up all the games resolution to native, this could be something that could cause people to drop the details more. Dragon Age's graphics work pretty well in 800x600, so I do advise to give it a whirl when it defaults to it. It seems to give you some freedom to push up the other graphic options while still looking quite presentable.

Playing the game, so far, it seems people were right to suggest the PC version for me. Even with the low-end Macbook Pro specs, it seems worth it to play that version via bootcamp. Especially once I found that nice little driver that fixed the Bootcamp windows low-audio issue on my machine.

Note: The driver fix I found was here.. http://www.stuffedcow.net/macbook_audio
 
I currently manage to play Dragon Age on highest settings with AA and verticle sync turned off at 1280 x 1024 with not many hiccups and a comfortable frame rate.

Running windows 7 with a pentium 4 3.2 ghz, nvidia geforce 7800 GTX and 2GB of ram.

If the macbook pro can't run it comfortably i'd be surprised.
 
Ran DOA on the late 2008 Unibody 2.4GHz MBP with the RAM upgraded to 4GB. Had max resolution and all the settings turned up to high, only exception was I turned AA off. Game ran perfectly fine and smooth, so yeah the MBP with the 9600 can handle this game perfectly fine.
 
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